What's The Story With the Nuns?

Mary Pat Kelly visits the nuns of her old novitiate to talk about the work they are doing and the Vatican investigation into their lives.

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Sister Nancy Reynolds (SP) during a liturgy installing her as a member of the order's General Council in 2006.

Photo by Courtesy of The Sisters of Providence, St. Mary-of-the-Woods

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Despite the obstacles, the nuns remain as dedicated as ever to their charitable works. In the communities near the Motherhouse alone, the Sisters have set up a free clinic that for twenty-five years has served the uninsured. They run the “House on Route 115,” where 170 children receive after school tutoring. At the ecumenical Providence Food Pantry, retired Sisters serve clients with incredible respect, Sister Denise said. “The Sisters understand it’s hard to have to come and ask for free food.”

The Sisters of Providence work in nineteen states and Taiwan in ministries ranging from Providence in the Desert, where two nuns teach English in migrant camps, through the more traditional service as teachers and parish ministers. But with so many Catholic schools closing, many teachers have lost their jobs. According to Sister Denise, “We have two Sisters who were principals of schools that closed. When they applied to other Catholic schools, they were told they were overqualified. They took jobs in public schools.”

“Our Sisters are inventive, though,” Sister Denise said, and she told the story of Miracle Place, a house Sister Rita and Sister Barbara founded in an African-American community in Indianapolis as a service center for seniors and students. The congregation gave them a grant to begin their work, and somehow they have managed to continue to find funds. Sister Denise said, “I asked one man I met at their annual fund-raiser how he got involved,” she remembers. “‘Against my will,’ he answered. ‘You try to say no to Sister Rita.’” Miracle Place recently expanded its ministry and began gathering crews to rehab abandoned houses. To date they’d rescued five houses to provide homes for the homeless. Both women are well past middle age.

With so few parish schools to provide religious instruction, many Sisters have become directors of religious education at parishes, teaching and training teachers in CCD programs and instituting family spirituality programs. And retirement doesn’t mean an end to service. Sister Martha Wessel directs the center where retired Sisters live and helps design their apostolate. “One Sister came home from Chicago yesterday,” she told me. “She’ll spend one morning a week at the maximum security federal prison in Terre Haute. There is no chaplain, so nuns now conduct prayer services there. Seven of our Sisters are ‘ministers of record’ for death-row inmates,” Sister Martha told me. The retired Sister has also “decided to work at the Food Pantry, visit those in Health Care, tutor, work at the day care center, and spend one hour a day praying at the Blessed Sacrament Chapel.”

“And how old is she?” I asked. “Eighty-three.”

These are the women the Vatican is investigating. Nancy Reynolds, SP, a member of the leadership team, treasurer of the congregation, and a canon lawyer, pointed out to me that “never before in the history of the Church has an Apostolic Visitation been undertaken that hasn’t been the result of an abuse.” It is hard to see what the abuse might be in this case, as the Sisters gracefully fight to remain active and effective in today’s society.

The immediate cause of the Apostolic Visitation seems to have been a symposium on religious life that was held at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts, during September 2008. Many of the speakers were critical of religious life in the United States. Ann Carey, a lay journalist who writes in Our Sunday Visitor, complained about mission statements on congregations’ Web sites that state that religious communities in the future may be more inclusive, welcoming associates who may be married. When I read her speech, I thought of the young man I met who was serving a year as a Providence Volunteer, helping at the White Violet Center on campus, an organic farm and eco-justice center. In what way was he threatening? And what about the young woman I’d met who spent a year living with the Sisters, working in their ministries to “deepen my spirituality.” I’d told Sister Denise she’d make a great nun. “Except she’s Jewish,” Denise replied. But to contribute her talents for a year? Why not?

A further point of contention, and perhaps the most tangible element in all of this, has been the habit. I asked Sister Bernice Kuper, SP, Director of Novices when I was in the novitiate, about the issue.

Sister Bernice pointed out that it was Pope Pius XII who “directed the world’s religious superiors to begin the modernization of their congregations. He specifically urged simplification of habits, laying aside outmoded customs, and the ongoing education of members.” This beginning of renewal and adaptation culminated in Vatican Council II, which Pope John XXIII called in 1962, and the 1965 document Perfectae Caritatis directed women religious “to revisit the roots of their congregation and to study the charism of their foundress . . . to be reenergized for ministry in the modern world.”

And so they did. And you know how nuns are: they did it thoughtfully and thoroughly. I was there when we realized that swathing ourselves in yards and yards of expensive, black wool serge and stiff, white linen headpieces was not the essence of our mission.  Most other congregations agreed. I remember thinking, it’s what we are, not what we wear, that’s important.

Today, 95 percent of the 70,000 consecrated women in the U.S. belong to orders that wear secular clothes, though any members who prefer to wear the traditional habit may do so.  These are the communities being investigated.  The other five percent of religious women in orders that wear habits and describe themselves as conservatives or traditionalists are not subject to the Apostolic Visitation. Is there a kind of nostalgia among the hierarchy for the way they think nuns and women used to be and should be again?

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